As things have started normalising and COVID-19 restrictions coming to an end, you all must have heard the health authorities and politicians saying that we’re going to have to learn to live with it.
Although, we have learned to live with the flu, but the comparison between the flu and Covid-19 worries Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist, from Ontario.
According to Furness, COVID-19 and Flu are not the same, as treating COVID like respiratory virus can be dangerous, as COVID-19 has a respiratory phase and is not a respiratory virus, which can cause serious long term or even permanent damage.
Scientists are still trying to understand the lingering effects of the coronavirus, which is known to cause damage to many vital organs and also cause loss of brain tissue.
Flu on the other hand happens to be a respiratory virus that doesn’t kill you and disappears completely. Monitoring COVID like the Flu is a dangerous thing, as one will have very little sense of what kind of population immunity there would be for the next wave and there would be a very little sense of what new variants could be developing.
According to Furness, testing and reporting of COVID should return to previous levels, as the virus can cause harm to some people, particularly the ones that are vulnerable, like children under five and elderly people who have significant health issues.
When governments start providing a narrative that COVID is no big deal, people stop getting the vaccine, which is a big mistake, as vaccinating the population is the most important thing one can do to keep the population safe.
Suggesting to the population that COVID is just like flu or cold would give them a hint that shots are not important and will probably lead the people to believe that the threat has passed away.
